1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the disclosure relate in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to method, system and computer-usable medium for the correlation of network events.
2. Description of the Related Art
The demand for increased network speeds and bandwidth by consumers, businesses, and government continues to increase. As a result, the use of. Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) technologies in today's networks is becoming commonplace. These networks, based on optical technologies, are capable of delivering large amounts of bandwidth. As an example, an Optical Carrier 3 (OC3) circuit can deliver data transmission speeds of 155 Megabits/second, while an OC192 circuit can deliver 10 Gigabits/second.
However, the size, speed, diversity, and complexity of these networks create corresponding challenges in their effective management. Furthermore, these networks are becoming increasingly interconnected, which creates additional challenges. As an example, a link failure in a SONET/SDH network may cause multiple sympathetic network events or alarms to emanate from circuits that have upper layer time slots. These network events or alarms can likewise result from the ingress and egress of each time slot of each circuit. As an example, an Optical Carrier 3 (OC3) failure occurring in a circuit can cause network management alarms to emanate from each of the three Digital Signal 3 (DS3) time slots on each side of the circuit. As a result, sympathetic network events and alarms emanate from affected devices and circuits along the path.
Determining which of these network events and alarms is associated with a root cause of a network issue can prove problematic. Current approaches to managing lower layer events include suppressing the sympathetic events that occur for time slots and terminations affected by the event. In other approaches for the management of router and switch-based networks, there are times when the path between two points can be known with certainty. The challenge is to then connect the events along a path to any lower lying event that might have caused the problem. However, there is no current solution for correlating these events.